


Wonderin' What in the World Did I Do

by bubblesbythebeach



Series: ‘Crazy’, Patsy Cline, 1961 [1]
Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Historical References, Romance, Sexual Content, references to bloodplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 04:01:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3313145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblesbythebeach/pseuds/bubblesbythebeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>19th century Texas. How Billy-Ray Sanguine lost his eyes, conceived before new short story canon.<br/> </p><p> <em>“What is it with you women?” he yelled, kicking at the air. “You come into our lives, you take everythin’! Throughout the years you got little pieces of me, of my very soul, and now? Now you got my damn straight razor! How am I supposed to kill people? How am I supposed to even shave?”</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderin' What in the World Did I Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MonkeyMindScream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonkeyMindScream/gifts).



_I knew, you’d love me as long as you wanted,_  
_And then someday, you’d leave me for somebody new._  
_Worry, why do I let myself worry?_  
_Wonderin’, what in the world did I do?_  
_Oh, crazy, for thinkin' that my love could hold you..._  
_I’m crazy for tryin’ and crazy for cryin’  
__And I’m crazy for lovin’ you._  

‘Crazy’, Patsy Cline, 1961

* * *

William-Raymond is fifty years old in 1761, practically a child in sorcerers’ years, but it is enough to give muscle to his willowy arms and calluses to his feet. On the ship from Jamaica his skin freckles under the sun and his dark brown hair turns a nutty gold. William squints throughout the day on deck until the sun sets over the ocean, dappling the waves in white strokes and setting the clouds on fire.

He relaxes then and finds himself a quiet spot at the aft of the ship to watch, for sunset is his favourite sight in the world and it means the shade of night is on its way. In another fifty years William will forget the sweat and the stink of this brief life at sea – as he will scrub the calluses from his skin and drop the delicate accent of his mother who gave him his first name.

There are new colonies and new names to be taken, and although wars will be waged in every corner of the globe there will be none as great and terrible as the one his father sailed away to fight in. There are sorcerers and mortals and maybe there will be space somewhere, somewhere solid and true, for William to wriggle in and put down roots and sink. Maybe one day he’ll be like his father, but he won’t do those sorts of things in wartime.

*

“Do you wan’ a piece of me?”

Billy-Ray meets Emmaline Desolate in 1857 when she shoves a man over a drinking trough and to the ground at Billy-Ray’s feet as he’s exiting a saloon. Her black mare is whinnying behind her, stamping up dust.

The fight is inevitable, uproarious, all-or-nothing and wildly _fun_ although Billy-Ray will eventually forget these details as well. Half the men are veterans of the war with Mexico and all of them have been drinking; the windows are smashed and precious bottles of bourbon end up broken on the floor. The fight spills onto the road outside the saloon, of course, and in the middle of it all is a woman with leather boots and a gleaming revolver in her hand.

She shoots a man dead in the heart and four more are wounded in all sorts of unsavoury places. Everyone’s horses are tossing their heads in panic.

The man Emmaline had first assaulted, an Energy Thrower whose clothes have been torn to shreds in the ensuing scrum, builds up his first sizeable fistful of crackling light. “You’re a right fireball, miss, but you’re outnumbered.”

The woman, black hat still on her head and scarf still knotted, cocks her Colt one last time. Her other hand has a curl of sharpened darkness around it, ready to spin through the air. “I like them odds, boys.”

The shadow around her wrist twirls lazily at first, but then faster, and faster, until it’s a blur obscuring her actual hand and she’s calling out, “Someone count ’em for me, would ya?” before she lets it go.

*

Billy-Ray remembers taking Emmaline’s hand, and bowing at the waist, and leading her down a step. He remembers touching the grip of her revolver, ice cold the moment his palm brushes it, and polished black: Emmaline has proudly named it Ebony after the wood from which the grip is made.

“You’re a Necromancer,” Billy-Ray says, pretty early on in their acquaintance.

Emmaline wrinkles her nose and the corner of her mouth lifts in disdain. “I ain’t with no church, alright? Never have been, never will be. Too hot ’round here for monk types anyway – they’re too used to bein’ up in the Chinese mountains and all. I just ride and sell and it’s just me and Ebony and my own two hands.”

Her face is heart-shaped and freckled like Billy-Ray’s used to be in his youth. Underneath her clothes she is milky pale; a ways back in her family is the French which gave her first name to her; the blushing Texan desert is what gave her the idea of ‘Desolate’.

“It’s less desolate now than it used to be,” she tells him.

“I know,” he replies.

They keep making each other laugh with one story or another, though, and that’s enough to keep his horse beside hers, at least until the next town. She thanks him, calls him ‘Sugar’.

*

“You’ve got fine eyes, Billy-Ray Sanguine. You fine, fine man. Finer than your hair, at any rate; you’re in need of a cut. And a shave.”

Emmaline stretches back and sinks deeper into the mattress, hands hiding themselves in her hair and combing lazily. Her legs are crossed at the ankles in front of her and her eyes flutter at him, challenging. She looks like a spoiled cat in human form.

“Is _that_ all?” Billy-Ray demands in mock indignation. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, watching as Emmaline’s gaze slips all in a rush down his hip, following the light down half of the ‘v’ there. She’s biting hard on her lower lip by the time she reaches Billy-Ray’s inner thigh a second later and he smirks wickedly.

But Emmaline doesn’t say anything, just makes a noise in her throat and reclines there, body opened like an orchid flower with both arms bent back. She could be split open from neck to belly-button with his thumbnail and she’d be mewling in contentment.

Billy-Ray decides to return to the rickety bed after washing up and soon enough he gets a definitive answer: “Your _mouth_ —Christ’s sake, Billy—yes, yes, your hands— _fuck_ , your fucking _ass_ —God yes, all of it, give me all of it!”

*

Billy-Ray buys himself a straight razor, but it is not from a barber.

Emmaline stands by his shoulder and hums thoughtfully. “That’s good workmanship there, sir,” she tells the man behind the counter. “How long will it stay sharp for?”

The shopkeeper looks up from counting his coins, strokes his moustache. “It’s a blade that looks after itself, I’d say,” he drawls. “But needs an owner that helps to look after it, understand? Mind you don’t nick yerself shavin’. In a fight between man and blade, that blade’ll win and the scars won’t go away easy.”

Emmaline nods in thanks. She has her pack filled with the supplies they’ll need until their next stop and hoists it onto her shoulder, ready to leave. Billy-Ray is still holding the straight razor in the fingertips of his left hand, stroking lightly along the handle with the fingertips of his right.

“You’re bein’ awful quiet, Sugar. Not happy with it?”

Billy-Ray huffs out a breath and pockets his new razor. “’S fine. She’s beautiful. Evenin’, sir.” He touches his fingers to the brim of his hat as they leave.

Emmaline divides the contents of her pack between their two horses. “What’s got your britches in a twist?” she asks as Billy-Ray secures all the pouches hanging from his saddle.

Billy-Ray puts his foot in the stirrup and mounts with a grunt. His eyes don’t move from his horse’s ears in front of him. “Got a letter from my dad, is all.”

*

Emmaline can’t speak a word of her ancestral language of love, but she levers herself up and chants into Billy-Ray’s ear as he fucks her. “I want you to write your name on me with that razor. I can bind it up tight ’til the bleedin’ stops but it’ll never go away, the letters won’t go away— _please_.” She brings her knees up and pulls him closer, the muscles of her legs so used to horse-riding strong enough to make his rhythm falter.

They’d never do it, obviously, but the idea has her heart beating faster and Billy-Ray kneads his head into the thin pillow above her shoulder with a groan.

“Where?” he breathes. “Where do you want it?”

“Anywhere. My leg. Back of my shoulder. Think of that, darlin’, three initials in shiny pink on this shoulder, what do you think—God’s sake,” she breaks off with a cry, her heels probably bruising the backs of his thighs, “if you don’t go faster, I swear to God, I’m beggin’ you—”

Billy-Ray lifts his head to bite her ear lobe and her voice trails off into a moan, but then _his_ voice does the same when Emmaline slaps her hands onto his backside and pulls him towards her.

“And I’m goin’ to write my name on this,” she whispers filthily. Her breathing speeds up, getting desperate and urgent. Emmaline pinches the side of one buttock, hard. “I’ll carve my full name right _here_ in tiny letters when you’re lyin’ down on your front and then you’ll have to fuck me with your ass still _stinging_ —” She wails, half-delirious, when Billy-Ray curves his arms behind her shoulders and rears up, his heart-stopping groan tumbling down her naked back.

*

Her lips are dry when she kisses him under a lamp. She licks at his lips, wetting them, smearing her mouth over his until all the motions are smoothed out. Billy-Ray’s ribs start to ache with how hard Emmaline is pressing into him, against the wall.

“Ouch,” he breathes, pulling his mouth away. His breath is warm between their faces.

She touches a hand to his cheek. “Oh, I’m real sorry, Honey.” Her thumb starts rubbing over the tanned cheekbone. “Can I just—”

A speck of black flickers in the corner of Billy-Ray’s vision and slices through his eyeball. Emmaline pulls her finger out again almost instantly, his eye speared on the claw of shadow. She winces, bares her clenched teeth, flicks her wrist towards the ground. The little black spike falls onto the dirt and shatters before dissipating into soft wisps – Billy-Ray’s eye crumbles a little at the corners from exposure to the cold shadow, like it’s been frostbitten.

He can’t even find the breath to scream through the shock.

The blood sluices on and on down his face and no matter all the times Emmaline kneads her hand on the wound, she’s left with a palm full of sticky goo and the only place to wipe it off is on her clothes or further down Billy-Ray’s jaw. The sheen of blood merely dries, stickier with every pass of her hand and then just cracking and prickling like a dried brown membrane.

Billy-Ray’s gone into shock. His shoulders are shaking against the wall, hands splayed flat on it, mouth gaping with breaths that chill the inside of his throat. He nearly chokes on his tongue when Emmaline comes back for his second eye, cutting the cord at the back of it with a snip of her fingers.

Billy-Ray’s knees had given out ages ago; when Emmaline steps backwards he simply clatters down to the ground like a sack of bones.

She bends down to take his sticky face in both her hands this time, kissing lightly over the holes in his head. “I wrote you a letter, Sugar. Explained it all, for sure I did. Pretty sure. Look, I gotta go. I put the letter in with all your other things, alright, Hon?”

His head rolls against the wood behind him. He can’t see a thing. He can’t see. He’s been blinded. Wildly, he wonders how the hell he is meant to _read a fucking letter_.

Emmaline Desolate’s booted footsteps back away. She pauses. Above their heads, moths circle around the light of the lamp. Into the last circle of light for miles, she gingerly and reverently places the words, “It’s been nice knowin’ ya, Billy-Ray. Please, get yourself to a doctor. Maybe I wanna see ya again someday.”


End file.
